Intel has released some pretty radical stuff in the past 15 or so months. First came the LGA 1366 processors and the X58 chipset, sporting Intel’s first on-processor memory controller and triple-channel memory. The architecture of the processor had some huge changes from the very successful Core 2 series. Next, at the end of last summer, the first round of LGA 1156 processors and the P55 chipset appeared. More architecture changes and the elimination of the Northbridge made this series even more radical.
All of these changes in processor and chipset design, along with Intel’s new 32nm manufacture process, opened the door for their latest and most radical change yet…placing the VGA on the processor. Yes, Intel’s new 2010 Core i5 600 series processors have on-die graphics processing. Of course to accommodate this, Intel has released a new motherboard chipset, the H55 Express. Sporting the same LGA 1156 socket as the P55, this new design has monitor ports in the I/O panel.
So far I’ve seen 20 H55 motherboards for sale at my favorite online retailer. Of these 20 boards, 19 are mATX boards, including the motherboard I am looking at today, the Asus P7H55D-M EVO. Sporting Asus’ EVO cosmetics and onboard extras, this motherboard also natively supports the new “Superspeed” USB 3.0. Read on to check out the Asus P7H55D-M EVO!
Packaging:
Obviously Asus has a new color scheme for 2010, at least for their EVO line of motherboards, the P7H55D-M EVO comes in a box with a blue sky theme. But like always, the box has a full display of specs and features found on the board.
Not being an upper-end Asus board, the motherboard is separated from the bundle items by a cardboard divider. The board is wrapped in an Asus static-free bag.
Over the past two months I’ve been pursuing a problem w/ASUS…
BEWARE: if you get a case that has an eSATA front port and you connect it to an internal motherboard [Intel H55 and maybe others] SATA port, it cannot be configured to have an eSATA hard drive ‘safely removed’. You will have to turn off caching (slow) or risk data corruption when removing it.
ASUS customer service is terrible and it will further adversely affect their bottom line because they are ruining their reputation. …So much for their “goal of 100% customer satisfaction”.
They ½-answer submitted technical inquiries to show they care, even though it is obvious they do not want to get to the root of or appropriately solve a problem system builders may be encountering and finding annoying. They do not seem to know Windows very well nor comprehend the underlying problem, nor do they spend any measurable time even reading the history of the problem, trying to determine where the problem really lies. They defer simple system builders to Microsoft $upport when it is clearly not a Microsoft problem. Concurrently they defer to Intel support (the maker of the chip/driver likely causing this problem and a company not selling chips to/supporting end-users) – when ASUS should be contacting Intel themselves, as an integration partner, to resolve issues such as this.
Over the past two months I’ve been pursuing a problem w/ASUS…
BEWARE: if you get a case that has an eSATA front port and you connect it to an internal motherboard [Intel H55 and maybe others] SATA port, it cannot be configured to have an eSATA hard drive ‘safely removed’. You will have to turn off caching (slow) or risk data corruption when removing it.
ASUS customer service is terrible and it will further adversely affect their bottom line because they are ruining their reputation. …So much for their “goal of 100% customer satisfaction”.
They ½-answer submitted technical inquiries to show they care, even though it is obvious they do not want to get to the root of or appropriately solve a problem system builders may be encountering and finding annoying. They do not seem to know Windows very well nor comprehend the underlying problem, nor do they spend any measurable time even reading the history of the problem, trying to determine where the problem really lies. They defer simple system builders to Microsoft $upport when it is clearly not a Microsoft problem. Concurrently they defer to Intel support (the maker of the chip/driver likely causing this problem and a company not selling chips to/supporting end-users) – when ASUS should be contacting Intel themselves, as an integration partner, to resolve issues such as this.